J. Gerard Stranch IV

The Baby Named in the Caption

One infant appeared beside nine Tennessee counties and eighteen cities and towns in an opioid complaint. J. Gerard Stranch IV led twenty-eight plaintiffs through four years of litigation, a discovery default that fixed liability, and a $35 million agreement designed for local use and one child’s care.

Baby Doe was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome after prenatal opioid exposure. Northeast Tennessee’s local governments alleged injuries measured on a different scale: emergency response, addiction treatment, law enforcement, social services, and the strain placed on public institutions.

The Sullivan County action joined the infant with nine counties and eighteen municipalities. Stranch served as lead trial counsel. The original defendants included opioid companies, a physician accused of operating a pill mill, and other participants in the alleged illegal market. Bankruptcy removed some corporate defendants from the active state-court path. Endo Health Solutions and Endo Pharmaceuticals remained as the case approached a damages jury.

Market Liability and the Infant’s Claim

The plaintiffs invoked Tennessee’s Drug Dealer Liability Act. The statute permits a civil claim against a person who knowingly participates in an illegal drug market and uses market liability to address a supply chain built to obscure the path of any particular dose.

A related case, Effler v. Purdue Pharma, reached the Tennessee Supreme Court in 2020. The court held that district attorneys general did not possess their own statutory cause of action under the Act. It also held that two infants had pleaded viable claims by alleging purposeful participation in the illegal opioid market.

That ruling defined the line Stranch’s team had to navigate. Governmental costs required legally authorized plaintiffs and provable local injury. The infant’s case required allegations and evidence connecting corporate conduct to a market in which individual doses had been diverted beyond ordinary prescription channels.

Four Hundred Thousand Late Documents

Discovery focused heavily on the sale and marketing of Opana ER. The Sullivan court had ordered production long before the scheduled trial. Its April 2021 order found repeated noncompliance, false statements, and nearly 400,000 documents produced after discovery had closed.

Chancellor E. G. Moody entered default judgment on liability against the Endo companies. The order functioned as a discovery sanction. It established liability because the court concluded that the defendants’ conduct had obstructed the fair administration of the case. A jury still had to determine damages.

The plaintiffs prepared to seek approximately $2.4 billion. Jury selection was moved from July 26 to August 2, 2021. The parties reached an agreement on July 27, before a damages jury was seated.

Thirty-Five Million Dollars, Paid Locally

Endo agreed to pay $35 million to resolve the opioid claims of all twenty-eight plaintiffs. The agreement ended the case without an admission of wrongdoing, fault, or liability.

The plaintiffs announced a direct lump-sum payment rather than a multiyear distribution routed through the State. Counties and municipalities controlled their shares and could direct the funds toward the needs they understood in their own communities. Baby Doe’s allocation was reserved for the child’s welfare under a guardian ad litem.

Stranch said, “The municipalities understand their particular needs better than anyone else.”

Timing added practical value. Endo and certain affiliates filed Chapter 11 petitions in August 2022. The Sullivan agreement had fixed the obligation approximately one year earlier, with payment expected within thirty to sixty days of execution.

Code That Knew It Was Being Tested

Volkswagen’s diesel litigation began with a different concealment problem. Federal regulators alleged that software in approximately 590,000 model-year 2009 through 2016 vehicles could recognize an emissions test and alter the performance of the emissions-control system.

The vehicles behaved differently on the road. Owners had purchased cars promoted for efficiency and environmental performance while the engine-control code distinguished a laboratory test from ordinary driving.

Judge Charles R. Breyer appointed Stranch to the twenty-two-member plaintiffs’ steering committee in January 2016. The coordinated litigation had to bring vehicle models, engine sizes, emissions data, marketing representations, owner choices, environmental remedies, dealers, regulators, and multiple defendants into one administration.

Buyback, Lease Termination, or Repair

The 2.0-liter consumer program carried an estimated value of up to $10.033 billion. Eligible owners and lessees could choose among buybacks, no-cost lease terminations, approved emissions modifications, and additional compensation. Separate settlements addressed 3.0-liter vehicles and Bosch.

Those options translated software evidence into a remedy at the level of a particular car. An owner who wanted to return the vehicle needed a buyback process. A lessee needed termination without ordinary penalties. Another owner could retain the car if an approved modification existed.

Stranch served on the twenty-two-member steering committee that coordinated consumer claims with regulators, engineers, settlement administrators, additional counsel, and the federal court.

Two Data Breaches, One Settlement Class

MGM Resorts experienced separate data incidents in 2019 and 2023. The compromised information included names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, driver’s-license numbers, passport numbers, and Social Security numbers. The 2023 incident also disrupted hotel and gaming operations.

Stranch served as a co-lead for the 2023 leadership team. Plaintiffs from the two incidents later pursued a combined settlement. In June 2025, the Nevada federal court granted final approval to a $45 million fund and affirmed Stranch and eight other lawyers as class counsel.

The benefits reflected the sensitivity of the data. Documented financial losses qualified for reimbursement up to $15,000. Tiered payments addressed exposure of Social Security or military-identification numbers, passports or driver’s licenses, and basic identity information. Class members could also obtain one year of three-bureau monitoring, identity-theft protection, and insurance.

Payments on approved cash claims were sent in December 2025. The final order retained jurisdiction over administration and distribution.

Correctional Medical Data and Privacy

CorrectCare Integrated Health processed medical claims for correctional facilities. A web-server configuration exposed personal identifying information and protected health information belonging to hundreds of thousands of incarcerated and detained people.

The Eastern District of Kentucky consolidated the cases and appointed Benjamin Johns, Gary Klinger, J. Gerard Stranch IV, and Lynn Toops as interim co-lead class counsel. The class included people whose information had been compromised through the incident.

The eventual $6.49 million non-reversionary fund offered reimbursement of documented losses up to $10,000, with alternative cash relief for class members without documented losses. California claimants received an additional state-law benefit. The court granted final approval in September 2024.

Approximately 100,000 claims were submitted, a participation rate near seventeen percent. The class consisted largely of people with limited access to credit monitoring, financial records, mail, and online claim systems. Administration therefore determined whether the remedy could reach the population whose data had been exposed.

Notice Designed for People in Custody

The final record identified 572,453 unique affected people. The administrator obtained usable mailing information for 391,449 of them, including addresses inside correctional facilities. Direct notice reached approximately sixty-one percent of the class; a website, toll-free line, press outreach, social media, and communication with families and advocacy groups extended the effort beyond ordinary consumer channels.

That design recognized the class’s circumstances. A person in custody may not control an email account, retain old financial records, receive ordinary commercial mail, or discover a breach while the claims period is open. The court therefore preserved a route for people who first learned of the settlement after the ordinary deadline to seek relief.

The agreement was also revised to protect more than one kind of claimant. High-dollar documented-loss payments could not consume the entire common fund. At least half remained available for alternative cash relief and California statutory payments, allowing people without extensive financial records to share in the recovery.

Private Equity and the Price of Competition

Dahl v. Bain Capital Partners concerned leveraged buyouts of public companies. Shareholders alleged that large private-equity firms coordinated bidding and allocated transactions that should have attracted competing offers.

The plaintiffs’ executive committee included Stranch. After years of discovery and summary-judgment litigation, seven settlements totaled $590.5 million for shareholders. The settlements returned $590.5 million to shareholders after the plaintiffs alleged coordinated bidding reduced competition.

Stranch and the team analyzed each transaction separately, including the buyers, target companies, bid communications, consortium arrangements, and affected stockholder classes. Aggregate antitrust proof established the alleged common pattern; distribution still depended on which shares each class member held and when.

A Contaminated Steroid across Twenty States

The 2012 New England Compounding Center outbreak arose from preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate used in spinal injections. Federal authorities later reported 753 diagnosed patients across twenty states and more than 100 deaths.

The plaintiffs’ steering committee included Stranch, who coordinated Tennessee litigation. His professional record credits the civil proceedings with more than $230 million in settlements. The work joined personal-injury claims with a bankruptcy estate, insurers, clinics, product distribution, public-health investigations, and the medical history of each patient.

The criminal prosecutions and civil settlements served different purposes. Criminal cases addressed individual violations and punishment. The civil process assembled funds and claims procedures for patients and families carrying fungal infection, neurological injury, medical expense, lost income, and death.

Securities, Allocation, and a Class’s Shape

His firm also identifies him as co-lead counsel in the Alpha Corporation securities matter, which produced a $161 million class recovery.

Administration determines who receives relief and in what amount. Depending on the case, that requires a class period and loss formula, proof tiers and monitoring, medical-causation review, or local allocation.

Teaching Complex Litigation

Stranch graduated from Emory University and Vanderbilt University Law School. He now teaches civil-litigation practice as a Vanderbilt adjunct professor. He is the founding and managing member of Stranch, Jennings & Garvey and leads the firm’s class-action, complex-litigation, and mass-tort groups.

His current work extends to privacy and cybersecurity, bank fees, labor and employee-benefit matters, wage-and-hour disputes, product liability, trucking cases, and public-entity opioid litigation. He also served as counsel to the proposed negotiation class in the national prescription-opioid multidistrict litigation, where allocation across states, counties, cities, and smaller rural communities became a central design problem.

His clients and class members have included infants, municipalities, vehicle owners, shareholders, patients, hotel guests, and incarcerated people. The settlement terms in each matter were tailored to the evidence and practical needs of the represented group.

Sullivan, Volkswagen, MGM, CorrectCare, Dahl, and NECC

Sullivan reserved Baby Doe’s allocation and left local governments control of their shares. Volkswagen tied relief to each vehicle. MGM matched benefits to the information exposed. CorrectCare adapted notice and payment rules for incarcerated people. Dahl distributed funds among shareholders, and NECC coordinated medical claims through bankruptcy.

Stranch’s work across those proceedings included coordinating common proof and helping develop claims and distribution systems for eligible claimants.